Big-Wave Events May Be Called Off, But California Expects Decent Swell

While early this week we thought we might see a trifecta of big-wave events get green-lighted (Jaws, the Eddie, and Mavericks) as a huge blob of swell energy raced across the Pacific, by Thursday it had become obvious that bad winds and less-than-mountainous waves forced those contests back into holding patterns. Friday morning, the Hawaiian islands were alive with swell, but it was mostly of the victory-at-sea variety, and it doesn’t look like it’ll clean up before the swell passes.

But for Californians who consider a 7’0” a “gun,” fun waves are forecast for the weekend and beyond. From Humbolt to Baja, surfers are packing their trucks and hoping to score some surf after a couple weeks of wave drought. You can count us SURFER editors amongst them, so we thought we’d post a quick link to WaveWatch’s Senior Forecaster Mark Sponsler’s weekend outlook, just in case you haven’t chosen your destination for 2009’s inauguaral swell. Yes, the current-eventsy pun was intended.